436-What If Clients Gain Weight? How to Coach (And Sell) Without Diet Culture

How do I coach a client who gains weight without selling a diet?

To coach a client through weight gain without promoting a diet, focus on reframing weight gain as a neutral event—not a failure. Begin by acknowledging the client’s emotions without colluding with the fear or shame they may be experiencing. Help them unpack what weight gain means to them and explore the beliefs behind their discomfort. Use tools from cognitive behavior coaching and trauma-informed practices to address the root thoughts and regulate emotional responses.

Encourage body neutrality and remind clients of the original, non-weight-related goals they had when starting your coaching program. Support them in rebuilding their confidence and sense of agency by offering alternatives like body image healing, nervous system regulation, and sustainable health-promoting behaviors. Above all, create a safe, non-judgmental space where clients can make empowered decisions about their health—without reverting to diet culture.

436 – What If Clients Gain Weight? How to Coach (and Sell) Without Diet Culture

[00:00:00] Welcome to It’s Beyond The Food Podcast. I’m your host, Stephanie Dosier, and today’s topic of the podcast will be about the biggest fears or fear that your client, and perhaps even you as a coach have, which is.

[00:00:14] A client gaining weight in your coaching package with them and them wanting to quit because they’re gaining weight and I’m gonna get us started right off the bat. By coaching you as a professional in the coach behind that, it is totally normal for you to feel terrified, scared, even guilty that your client is not.

[00:00:42] Getting the result that they want and they’re gaining weight and they are wanting to quit. And it’s totally normal that it shakes your confidence as a coach, both from a professional skillset and also from a business skillset in you have not been able to deliver a complete [00:01:00] coaching package to your clients.

[00:01:01] So I wanna talk to both of those angles. In this podcast episode, we’re gonna go through seven step on how I teach to coach weight gain within the non diet coaching certification. But also at the end, I’m gonna give you some tools for you as the professional having this moment with your client.

[00:01:22] I see this, the weight gain circumstance very often within the population that I serve, which is health professional and coaches from many angle. I often hear that coaches feel guilty for their client, not. Wanting to continue coaching with them because they’re gaining weight. I hear coaches that lose their confidence because they’re not being effective in the moment where the client brings up the fear, the despair that [00:02:00] they are experiencing because they’re gaining weight and they feel like they’re not, quote, a good coach because they don’t know what to do with this space.

[00:02:09] And they end up freezing. They end up mumbling to it, avoiding the topic, trying to fix the despair that their clients are experiencing. And the podcast came from that space of, see, for me, seeing this over and over again, being able to help my student within the non diet coaching certification, but seeing.

[00:02:32] Many other people that I’m not working with experiencing that fear and hearing about it, particularly in the biannual survey that we do with health Professional who are weight neutral. And if you are one of those professional who contributed to the survey we did in June, thank you very much. And if you are part of our email community, you’ll get another one likely in November where you can [00:03:00] share the struggle and this fear that you have.

[00:03:01] So this is for you, this is for all of you who are not in a non-diet coaching certification who are having a struggle with that. So before we get into the seven step, I wanna explain the different framework or the different philosophy or value that these seven step were built from. So in the non-diet coaching certification, we use different framework. We hold very specific value that fuel this framework in how we approach weight gain.

[00:03:33] Number one. Cognitive behavior coaching model helps us approach the problem of weight gain at the thought and the belief level. One of the value that fuel the cognitive behavior coaching model is intersectionality, which helps us see how weight gain is specifically impacting the individual that’s in front of us.

[00:03:59] We [00:04:00] also have a trauma informed approach because we believe that weight stigma, The fear of fatness or the fear of weight gain and dieting. Is a traumatic experience. So we combine both the cognitive with cognitive behavior coaching framework, but also a nervous system regulation approach. So we bake the two in the approach to weight gain.

[00:04:27] We also believe in a collaborative model of coaching, which. Is where we work with our client to help them find the right answer for them. We believe in the agency of our client, which is often what diet culture strips from them by telling them they’re not. Quote, good enough to know how to eat, to know how to take care of themselves, to know how to exercise, and they need this quote guru, an expert to tell them what [00:05:00] to do.

[00:05:00] So part of our healing framework is to help our client regain their power in their agency. So we use a collaborative model of coaching. And when we think about, , body distress or body image healing, we adopt a framework called body neutrality, which approach body image at the belief level based on.

[00:05:25] Most of our client being self-identified women on how women are taught and indoctrinated and socialized to believe that they are their body, their value into the world is how their bodies show up, and this is why they feel such. Despair and they’re terrified at the idea of gaining weight because it’s stripping them of their value into the world.

[00:05:50] So body neutrality comes in and helps them rebuild new belief around why they have a body as a woman. [00:06:00] So when we approach weight gain, we approach weight gain from a place of weight gain being a circumstance that is completely neutral. And intrinsically gaining weight is not good. It’s not bad. It’s just what is, just like you have growing.

[00:06:19] , If you’re watching me on YouTube, like I’m pointing at my nail bed, right? My nails are growing, my weight is increasing, my hair is getting longer. And by the way, just a pause if you’re watching me on camera right now. Yes. I got my hair cut. So it’s kind of a bad analogy here, but your hair growing, your nails are growing, your weight is increasing intrinsically, that is completely neutral.

[00:06:46] So weight gain isn’t the problem. The problem is the meaning that the client gives to the weight gain, [00:07:00] and that’s gonna bring us to our first step neutralizing weight gain. Framing weight gain as a neutral circumstance, and using a lot of analogy like I just did to help your clients see that intrinsically weight gain isn’t good or bad.

[00:07:20] It’s their thoughts, their opinion about weight gain that makes it something terrifying. So first step, meet your client where they are with their emotion, they’re coming to you associated with weight gain. Listen, acknowledge the intensity of their emotion and help them acknowledge they want help with the intensity of the emotion and what it means for them to have.

[00:07:56] Gain weight. Step number two, [00:08:00] normalize that level of distress, but don’t collude with it. If you don’t acknowledge the despair, you will be gaslighting them. Acknowledge the level of despair, but don’t make it like it’s the only possible way they can experience their weight gain. Recognize, help them see the layers of their identity and how it influenced their perspective of weight gain.

[00:08:33] How being a woman in a patriarchal society impacts their perspective of their weight growing. Fear of fatness, weight stigma, diet, culture, help them name how these system impact their experience of weight gain. So again, meet the circumstance neutrally, acknowledge the experience, don’t [00:09:00] minimize it, and help them understand their experience.

[00:09:03] So here’s some questions, some powerful coaching question I like to ask at this stage. I hear you and I see how hard weight gain feels for you right now. Let’s explore what’s underneath that reaction together. What are you making this weight gain mean about you? What are you afraid will happen now that you are gaining weight?

[00:09:33] What beliefs do you hold about people who are in larger body? How do you feel if you believe that you will have these same consequence into your life? I’m giving you powerful question, but as you know, as a coach, we don’t bombard question one after the other. We ask a question, we silence, and we let our [00:10:00] client , pull the answer within them so they can hear themselves.

[00:10:04] That’s how we can bring them to a place where they can see how they’re creating the way that they’re experiencing their weight gain, which is step number three, help them see not only how they’re experiencing now weight gain, but also other possible way they could be experiencing weight gain. Help them see that they are creating.

[00:10:33] Their current experience and they have power over how they can experience it, not by denying the despair, the fear, the sheer dread that they have of gaining weight than even gaining more weight. We don’t help people see a different opportunity, different experience by denying the current. So acknowledge the current, [00:11:00] help them see why it’s so intense for them, and help them see what it could be, different experience for them.

[00:11:11] So a couple of questions you could ask is, what are you thinking will happen if you gain weight right now? Is it true that all these things will happen? Have them through your coaching question, walk through the actual truth of every one of those fears that they hold within them.

[00:11:31] Here’s a classic example of what happened when people start regaining the weight loss, is people go through what we call in psychology principle called catastrophization. They catastrophize. To the worst outcome possible. What can happen, so people will be in the process. That’s a deep gain. I don’t know.

[00:11:55] We’ll just put a number for the fun of it just to illustrate this, like 15 pounds, [00:12:00] the person may have been, I don’t know, somewhere between 175 and 225 pounds just for the sake of it. When they realize they’re gaining the, the 15 pounds, either because they step on the scale, they pants doesn’t fit anymore, and they come to your session.

[00:12:17] Some of them will present with what we call cognitive distortion of catastrophization and say, oh my God, I’m gonna gain 500 pounds. And I’m not saying that being 500 pounds is bad, it’s the mind what? I want you to observe it. The catastrophization moving from 15 pounds, weight gain, or one size pants to 500 pounds.

[00:12:40] Weight gain, the brain and this is a safety mechanism that our brain has, our cognitive function have in order for us to go back into the circumstance where we were before, which is controlling food, controlling our body, even though it doesn’t work, it’s elusive thinking, but our nervous system wants us to go [00:13:00] back to where we thought it was safe, even though it wasn’t safe, and it makes us catastrophize.

[00:13:07] So as a coach, when we see catastrophization, we need to walk in it, not deny it. Okay. Are you saying right now that you’re thinking because you’ve gained a pants size of 15 pounds, that you going to gain 500? Is that what you’re saying? Have them walk through the logistical thinking the truth behind their biggest fear.

[00:13:39] So that’s step number three. Help them see other possible way of thinking. And very often this back and forth argumentation between you and your client and their thought will get you to a place where you can ask So. What actually can we do here? What actually is the [00:14:00] potential outcome that will happen out of your weight gain when we remove all the catastrophization, all the worst case scenario, what truly can happen?

[00:14:12] Step number four is when we bring in the nervous system into the conversation. When we actually teach our client and co-regulate with our client to help them through move through the panic, the despair, the shame, because what we have to understand, again, it’s a reaction from our nervous system to trigger fear, despair, shame thread.

[00:14:38] It’s not a response. And the key for us in coaching is to bring back our client in a state of response versus reaction. And we have different emotional regulation tool that you can use. For me, the one that I prefer and that I teach over and over again is the concept of [00:15:00] riding the wave of our emotion, being with our emotions.

[00:15:04] So very often when our client, when my client is in a state of Dispair fear, I will use riding the wave and I will sit with them in that moment, in that coaching session. In the despair, I will close my eyes, do a couple of breathing exercise with them. I will lead them through them, and we will go in the body to feel the despair, to feel where it is in the body, how it shows up.

[00:15:38] So that we can move our client to a state of response versus reaction. So I’ll teach them how to name the emotion, how to label the emotion, how to feel the emotion so they can process it. Coaching question can sound like, where do you feel the despair in your body? What does it look like? What [00:16:00] does the despair feel like?

[00:16:01] Is it numbing? Is it throbbing? Is it hot? Is it cold? Is it, how intense is it on a on a scale of one to 10? And then I’ll be in the chest, and then I’ll move them in the belly and we’ll go through the same labeling identifying process. That’s what we mean, or we teach when we talk about nervous system regulation, trauma informed coaching to be with the emotion that the client is experiencing as a result of their weight gain.

[00:16:35] And that’s when we can ride that emotion with them. When we can teach them the tool, we can move from a place of reaction, oh my God, I need to quit because I’m gaining weight to, okay.

[00:16:47] What actually do I want to think about this weight gain and what do I want to do about this weight gain that will lead me closer to [00:17:00] who and what I want to do when I enter the coaching with you, my coach? And these are the questions you can ask your client when you enter the coaching with me. We have very specific goals.

[00:17:13] How can we reframe this weight gain experience so we can get closer to these goals? Because none of these goals were weight loss, ’cause when we onboard our client, and I’m talking here to practitioners, to professional who do not sell intentional weight loss. So when you set up your goals with your client for your coaching relationship.

[00:17:36] It’s 99% was non intentional weight loss. So we still on this journey of achieving these goals that you had with me. How do we need to think, feel, and react towards this weight gain so we can continue to pursue those goals that we have? And that’s step number five. Explore other solution, help them [00:18:00] find.

[00:18:01] Other solution than quitting, than being terrified, than being frozen in the moment in this weight gain experience. And part of this step number five is. You with your professional training, being able to offer other option beyond intentional weight loss and dieting, that’s where we can offer body image healing. And very often this is the stage where for some of my client, they entered into a relationship of coaching with their client.

[00:18:35] Around eating behavior, be it stopping binging cycles, stopping emotional eating, the weight gain happens, and then we introduce the solution of body image healing, if it’s not yet in your relationship of coaching with your client, this is one of the other option. This is telling you that your [00:19:00] client in front of you is experiencing.

[00:19:03] Severe body dissatisfaction and their value into the world is tied up to the way they look and that despair, that sheer panic they’re experiencing because of weight gain is just a sign of how they need to unpack. What does it mean for them to have a body and who they are as a person into the world if they’re not a.

[00:19:29] I don’t know. Thin bodied person, so body image healing is another option. Helping your client create confidence. Confidence coaching that is not reliant on body size health promoting behavior beyond intentional weight loss. What does it mean to pursue a better health that is accessible to them without being it about reducing

[00:19:56] The size of their pants, so a non-diet [00:20:00] approach to women’s health. Now, you will need to put these out there to remind them that all of this is possible, even though they’re gaining weight right now. Help them get clear by offering different solution. Testing every one of these solution within them, how does it feel for them to, for an example, work on their body image?

[00:20:25] What does it feel like for them to pursue health even though they’re gaining weight? Help them make a decision. That will help them get closer to the goal they wanted to achieve to work with you. And that’s step number six. Hold safe space for them to make a decision, not to tell them what to do, but to make a decision that is aligned with the desired outcome.

[00:20:58] They sign up in [00:21:00] coaching with you. Now, how do we hold safe space primarily by holding neutral stance, non-judgmental, non-critical, non-op, opinionated space, you need to hold that space where they can explore every option and they don’t sense that you as the coach, think that this option is better than the other one, and this option should not even be explored.

[00:21:28] Your ability to remain neutral in that coaching conversation without expressing opinion is what will create a safe space for them to make a decision. And for many client, when it comes to health, to weight to food, they’re not used to that. Because diet culture patriarchy has trained women to default to other people making a decision for them when it comes to their [00:22:00] body, to their nutrition, and to their health.

[00:22:03] So that last step of holding safe space. Could be quite uncomfortable for your client because they’re gonna consistently come back to you and say, so what should I do? What is the best option for me? And you constantly have to deflect back to them as to what is the best decision for them towards the goal that they had when they started to work with you.

[00:22:26] Because remember, a coach role. Is to help their client achieve their goal. So when you set up the goal at the beginning of your relationship with them, which is a whole other technique, but you set goal, these goals is what you are working towards while the weight gain happens, but you need to get back on track to help them achieve the goal that they have in working with you and stay true to helping them.

[00:22:56] Get to their desired outcome in your relationship with [00:23:00] them. Now I’m gonna get to you as a coach. That’s step seven if you want. But I wanna say this, that fear, that dread, that sheer panic that people have when they gain weight is why people hired you. I want you to be really conscious of that and sitting in that because it’s most likely that people before hiring you and paying you good amount of money as a coach, that they’ve read the books that they have tried on their own, the perhaps listen to my podcast.

[00:23:45] And attempted to do it on their own and it didn’t work. And that fear, that dread got them back into diet culture a couple times before they finally said, I need help. [00:24:00] So that moment of weight gain has happened times and times over, and now you’re holding them to a place of potentially. Making a different decision, not reverting back to their old ways of going back on a diet, but holding them through a different response to weight gain.

[00:24:24] That’s. Where the money is worth in hiring a coach, holding that space to making a difference decision so you can finally achieve the goal that you wanted all along. And that’s the skillset of being a professional coach. Now, how do you coach yourself as the professional, the practitioner behind the client gaining weight?

[00:24:51] Again, are you reacting or are you responding in that moment, when you hear the words, the sensation, [00:25:00] the emotion that arise in you, are you able to stay with that fear of potentially losing a client of that? Feeling of guilt that you have, that your client is gaining weight of your self blame.

[00:25:15] I’m not good enough of a coach. That’s why this is happening. Are you able to see that reaction, that emotion rising in you feel it, understand it, and make a decision to respond? In alignment to the space you are holding for your client as their coach, how do you meet yourself in the moment that your client says the word, I’m gaining weight.

[00:25:45] I want to quit. Are you holding yourself with compassion, with safety? How are you coaching yourself through that moment? The same six steps that I just [00:26:00] outlined in face of a how to coach a client. You’re gonna flip the script and apply it to you. My client is, gaining weight is a neutral circumstance. How you feel about your client experiencing weight gain is entirely the result of how you think about that circumstance.

[00:26:24] That’s where the coaching is for you. So take those same six step, flip the script and apply it to you. If you wanna learn how to coach yourself what I call self coaching and how to coach other with confidence through weight gain, through probably one of the most difficult experience in a woman living in a patriarchal diet, culture, entrenched society.

[00:26:53] You gotta come into my world of the non diet coaching certification. That’s where I teach you the skillset to coach [00:27:00] yourself through those moment. But also how to coach other. We’re gonna teach you all the techniques and the framework that will enable you , to deliver those six steps to your client from a place of neutrality, from a place of confidence.

[00:27:18] The next cohort for the non diet coaching certification, if you’re listening to this in a timely fashion, will happen October the 13th, 2025. And if you are. Way past that date. That’s okay. Still come onto the wait list and we’ll notify you for the next cohort happening in 2026. And if you wanna join the October, 2025 cohort, still get out on a wait list because there will be specific bonuses and pricing for people on the wait list.

[00:27:53] It was a pleasure being with you. I love you, my sister, and I’ll see you on the next podcast.

[00:28:02] wanna coach behaviors, not bodies. Learn the mindset tool and the method that create real changes.

[00:28:10] Join the wait list for the next cohort of the non diet coaching certification at stephaniedodier.com/waitlist. That’s where the real training begins, and I’ll see you on the other side, my sisters.